Free EMR Newsletter Want to receive the latest news on EMR, Meaningful Use,
ARRA and Healthcare IT sent straight to your email? Join thousands of healthcare pros who subscribe to EMR and HIPAA for FREE!!

Email Address:

We never sell or give out your contact information.
We respect our readers' privacy.

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

As the paper notes, mobile application development is moving at a brisk clip, driven by consumer and governmental demands for better quality care, lower healthcare costs and improved access to information.

The problem is, it’s hard to create mobile products — especially a mobile PHR — when the various sectors of the healthcare industry don’t share data effectively. According to Frost & Sullivan, it will be necessary to connect up providers, hospitals, physician specialty groups, imaging centers, laboratories, payers and government entities, each of which have operated within their own informational silos and deployed their own unique infrastructures.

The healthcare industry will also need to resolve still-undecided questions as to who owns patient information, Frost & Sullivan suggests. As things stand, “the patient does not own his or her health information, as this data is stored within the IT protocols of the EHR system, proprietary to providers, hospitals and health systems,” said Frost & Sullivan Connected Health Senior Industry Analyst Patrick Riley in a press statement.

While patient ownership of medical data sounds like a problem worth addressing, the industry hasn’t shown the will to address it. To date, efforts to address the issue of who owns digital files has been met with a “tepid” response, the release notes.

However, it’s clear that outside vendors can solve the problem if they see a need. For example, consider the recent deal in which Allscripts agreed to supply clinical data to health plans. Allscripts plans to funnel data from participating users of its ambulatory EMR to vendor Inovalon, which aggregates claims, lab, pharmacy, durable medical equipment, functional status and patient demographics for payers. Providers are getting patient-level analyses of the data in return for their participation.

Deals like this one suggest that rather than wait for interoperability, bringing together the data for a robust mobile PHR should be done by a third party. Which party, what it will it cost to work with them and how the data collection would work are the least of the big problems that would have to be solved — but might be that or nothing for the foreseeable future.

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

Over the last few years, the use of EMRs in medical practices has grown dramatically, with over 50 percent of office-based physicians now using such systems. However, physicians still face major barriers in adopting EMRs, including costs, usability issues and impacts on doctor productivity.

This model, also known as “software as a service” (SaaS) stores patient data in the cloud, accessible from any secure device connected to the Internet.

Not only does the cloud/SaaS model make it easy to access patient data, it saves practices having to come up with a large up-front installation fee to set up software on site. Instead, practices pay a monthly fee which is predictable (and usually, manageable).

The price difference is very striking. The average cost of a client-server implementation over five years ranges from $30K to a whopping $80K per provider, not including the cost of training, interfaces, patient portals and conversions from other systems, the white paper notes.

But cost isn’t the only reason for small practices to go with a cloud/SaaS EHR. Increasingly, physicians are going mobile with care, via smartphone and tablet. As the Bring Your Own Device phenomenon explodes, practices are going to want an EHR which can easily be accessed and used via the Internet.

Read this paper to learn more about mHealth and how a cloud/SaaS solution can support your small practice’s mobile strategy while protecting critical data offsite in the event of a disaster; being sure that your data is encrypted at rest as required by Meaningful Use; and even how doctors can use voice to chart notes.

Of course, there are many who still argue against a cloud based EHR. They have their reasons that are worthy of consideration. An in house client server EHR does have its advantages over SaaS EHR. You have to weigh the pros and cons of each. Then, you can make a great decision for your organization.

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

We already know that many physicians are considering dumping their current EMR, with up to one fifth telling research firm Black Book Rankings that they were considering a switch in 2013. Now, Black Book says that it’s found a focus for the switch: that physicians are looking for new EMRs to offer integrated mobile applications as front ends.

Seldom do you see as unanimous a decision as doctors seem to have made in this case. One hundred percent of practices responding to Black Book’s follow-up poll on EMR systems told the researchers that they expect vendors to allow access to patient data wherever physicians are providing or reviewing care, according to the firm’s managing partner Doug Brown.

Not surprisingly, vendors are responding to the upsurge in demand, which has certainly been building for a while. As part of the current survey, 122 vendors told Black Book that they plan to launch fully-functional mobile access and/or iPad-native versions of their EMR products by the end of this year, while another 135 say they have mobile apps on their near-term product roadmap.

Demand for core patient care functionality in mobile EMRs outpaces physicians’ interest in other types of mobile functionality by a considerable margin.

According to Black Book researchers, 8 percent of office-based physicians use a mobile device for electronic prescribing, accessing records, ordering tests or viewing result. But 83 percent said they would jump on mobile EMR functions to update patient charts, check labs and order medications if their currrent EMR made them available.

When asked what mobile EMR feature problems need to be addressed, current users of both virtualized and native iPad applications saw the same flaws as being the most important. Ninety-five percent of both groups said that the small screen of a smartphone was the biggest mobile EMR feature problem. Eighty-eight percent said difficulties with easy of movement within the chart was an issue, 83 percent said they wanted a simplified version of the EMR on their mobile screen and 71 percent wanted to see screens optimized for touch use.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

More Time Spent Selecting the Right EMR Vendor is a Prudent Investment ow.ly/kRPvC

A prudent investment is an understatement. The very best use of your time in an EMR implementation is in the selection process. Although, I’ve also seen some clinics go too far and run into the issue called “paradox of choice.”

Mobile EMR has always been a wonderful idea, but how many are really using their EMR on a mobile device. Let’s also not confuse mobile EMR with remote EMR. Certainly many doctors are using the same EMR from multiple clinics. That’s common and beautiful. However, far fewer are using their EMR on a mobile device. The most common response I get from doctors about a mobile EMR is “I can access my EMR on a mobile device, but the experience is terrible.” I expect this will dramatically change over the next 3-5 years, but won’t likely be the full EMR. Instead, I think it will be a really focused set of EMR functions on the mobile device. I’m not sure anyone has nailed that experience yet. Although, a lot of EMR vendors are working on it.

Choosing an an EHR is about as much fun a root canal and as straightforward as buying a vehicle. #EHR#EMR#Electronic

Everyone that’s read this site for a while knows how much I love analogies. Both of these are pretty spot on. The root canal is necessary and can relieve a lot of long term pain, but it’s no fun going through the process. Buying a car is hard because there are so many choices and so many details that it’s hard to know what really differentiates the complex item you want to buy.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

While it seems that many people are coming out with distaste for the Olympics, I am still on the side of enjoying the Olympics thoroughly. I’ve watched as much of the coverage as possible. What can I say, I’m a sucker for pretty much any sporting event. I hope everyone else has been getting as much joy out of the Olympics as I have gotten, but I digress.

As you know, each week I take a quick look at some interesting tweets that have been posted around the EMR, EHR and Healthcare IT twittersphere. Plus, I’ll add a little commentary that will hopefully start some interesting conversations and help you as a reader.

Landmine with #EMR is carrying forward un-rechecked patient information from a previous patient visit. Expect a patient error or an audit.

What a perfect way to describe the issue: an EHR Landmine. Jane Shuman is exactly right too. In fact, a local doctor recently told me the same thing. The challenge of checking and re-checking patient information from a previous patient visit is a huge problem waiting to happen. I think the doctor I talked to said that EMR perpetuates mistakes. It’s so true. I wonder what other EMR landmines are out there.

You have to love Regina Holliday. A tireless patient advocate. Years down the road I hope that Regina will be able to stop her patient advocacy. Not because she gets tired of doing it, but because we embrace the patient in healthcare.

Free EMR Newsletter Want to receive the latest news on EMR, Meaningful Use,
ARRA and Healthcare IT sent straight to your email? Join thousands of healthcare pros who subscribe to EMR and HIPAA for FREE!

Email Address:

We never sell or give out your contact information. We respect our readers' privacy.